Jesse Sheidlower

@jessesword.com

5264 Followers 511 Following

Lexicographer. The F-Word (new edition Nov. ’24!), sfdictionary.com, ex-OED, coder (mainly Perl and Python), Threesome Tollbooth #cocktail bar manager, adjunct @ Columbia. "Appealingly obsessive" — NYT

Photo of a bodega display menu, focused on an "Add Extra" section, with "Tomatoes" for $50 (not "$.50"), "Letters" [sic] for "$free", and "Cheese" for $75.

Poster for the film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"

Picture of a squat rack with a window behind it, and a raptor standing on the window ledge

Selfie of me in a jacket, bow tie, and fez, and a smiling young woman in a Star Trek lieutenant commander costume.

Screenshot of a featured Stack Exchange post: "Am I already too old to consider pursuing an academic career?"

To Richard Arderne, Thomas Knolles, and Laurence Stubbs
succeeded as bursars, 18 Hen. VII, John Stokysley, John Hygdon, and John Drewett. This year the chest in the bursary was
robbed of £112. They were sworn to the loss, and then their account was passed, but with a reserve in case proof should be found
against them. In the account-book of the next year are the fol-
lowing entries respecting this business.

"Solut cuidam scholastico qut (quatenus) misso ad quendam astrologum consulendum pro bonis coll" ablatis superiori anno xvid."

"In regardis 2bus astrologis calculantibus pro eisdem bonis coll xx6."

Screenshot of an "About me" section, with a link labelled "+ Add preferred buggy whip size"

Picture of a long sandwich cut in half and wrapped in paper, on my desk

'The worst? Oh—jolly good, sis. Ha ha. A boyfriend, eh? Well, well. What a turn up for the books. I don't mind telling you, my gob is smacked and my gast is flabbered and my thunder is struck—'
'Thank you, Henry.'

Clipping from an article in the San Francisco Examiner, 29 Feb. 1916: "Morphine Served A la Carte to Cafe Patrons / Sleuth Confiscated Mashed Potatoes and Penetrates Secret Menu of Drug Feast." About an SF restaurant serving opiates in some dishes.

Screenshot of an old periodical* with a headline reading "TIME WAS UP." and the subhed "It was Quit Coffee or Die."

* The Delineator, May 1901.

Image of the title page of _'Isms: A Dictionary of Words Ending in -ISM, -OLOGY and -PHOBIA: With Some Similar Terms Arranged in Subject Order_ published by the Libraries and Arts Committee, Sheffield City Libraries, 1963.

Picture of a bunch of matchbooks, taken from Paul Lukas's _Inconspicuous Consumption_.

Screenshot of an email with the subject line "Freelance Native Linguist Opportunity with [REDACTED]", continuing "Hi,
I’m reaching out on behalf of [REDACTED]. We are currently hiring native linguists / language consultants for a paid remote project in the speech AI evaluation space. We are looking for support in the US English Language.

The role involves reviewing and refining sentence sets, checking for natural spoken usage, and guiding us on how use-case-specific communication is typically expressed in your language and country context.

We are looking for native speakers with strong linguistic intuition. A Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Linguistics, Language Studies, Translation, Localization, Literature, Communication, or a related field would be preferred. Relevant certifications"

Picture of a large black church

Picture of an elderly man in a rural-looking cabin posing next to a copy of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (the original version, two volumes in a slipcase with magnifying glass)

Screenshot of the first non-bracketed quote in the OED for First World War:

"*1918*

To call it The German War was too much flattery for the Boche. I suggested The World War as a shade better title, and finally we mutually agreed to call it The First World War in order to prevent the millennium folk from forgetting that the history of the world was the history of war.

C. à C. Repington, _Diary_ 10 September in _First World War_ (1920) vol. II. xxxvii. 391"

Photograph of the flier and menu for the pop-up of Paradiso, the Barcelona cocktail bar, in residency at MAD Bar in New York. Forgive me for not transcribing the elaborate menu.

Photo of an older black man sitting in a chair wearing sunglasses and a hat and a suit, playing a 12-string guitar, while a young blonde girl in a gingham dress dances next to him

Screenshot of the OED entry for "I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole" + variants.

P.2.
1838–
Originally U.S. I wouldn't touch it (also him, her, etc.) with a ten-foot (also forty-foot) pole: I refuse to have anything to do with (a person or thing). Cf. I wouldn't touch it (also him, her, etc.) with a barge pole at barge pole n. Phrases

1838

She was jest as good as mine, till you com a goin arter her, and now I can't touch her with a forty foot pole.

Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio) 19 June
1843

Senator Lahm, and Representatives Kilgore and Martin,..would not touch it [sc. a piece of legislation] with a ten foot pole. They knew it would not work.

Ohio Repository (Canton, Ohio) 5 October

Photo of Stephin Merritt playing a ukulele on a stage, in front of a screen projecting a live-artwork accompaniment

Picture of my hand holding a copy of Ben Lerner's novel _Transcription_

Partial screenshot of the OED entry for "gel" n.(1), etymologized as "Representing a regional (southern English), affected, or (specifically English) upper-class and upper-middle-class pronunciation of girl n." and defined as "British. A girl, a young woman; spec. an upper-class or aristocratic young Englishwoman."

Partial screenshot of the OED entry for _somewhy_, labelled "rare", and defined as "For some reason or reasons", with two mid-19th C. quotations, one of which is from Robert Browning. (Note that this is an unrevised entry, so more research will definitely show more evidence.)

Photo of a copy of Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists, on a glass desktop with my hand holding it in place

Picture, showing a pair of signs in an apparent park, with a lovely tree in the near background and a flat manicured lawn in the far background. The first sign reads "San Diego [/] PLEASE [/] Lawn bowling only [/] Bocce or any other activity prohibited" The second sign reads "Directions to free public boccecourts [sic]", followed by detailed and complicated driving directions.

Screenshot from the Nov. 28, 1919 issue of Variety, from a review of a burlesque performance, partly containing the text "It landed a solid wallop. A simple mirror ball effect with reflected lights helped the number greatly."

Photo of the door of an apartment, numbered "404".

Picture of a small salt cellar, with the spoon in the image of a conventional female saint

Caption from an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sidney, for the artist Shaun Gladwell, containing in part the text "...a ritual in which surfers farewell the recently deceased..."

Photograph of a gym interior, with the slogan "the power of positive" printed diagonally on a wall, and a squat rack with the bar loaded to 130kg in the foreground

Picture of two nenes on a street

Picture of a young child in a zoo looking at a cassowary, which for the purpose of this skeet, I am imagining could be clued in some "emu"-related way

Picture of a snake in a zoo, identified on a sign as a "northern death adder"

Infographic about the weight of ice and the chance of this leading to power outages, having two panels. The first shows a picture of a tree rimed with ice, and the label "7,125 pounds of ice"; the second show a green tree with 7 golden retrievers in it, and the label "109.5 golden retrievers"

[Screenshot of software license, with highlight text reading:]

NOTE ON JAVA SUPPORT: THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SUPPORT FOR PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN JAVA. JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

"Politicians," strummed Posi, at loss for a definition, "comes from the word 'politics'. It's—er—you see, these tellurians have ancient Latin and Greek roots to build their words from. The word ‘poly’ means many. A ‘tic’ or ‘tick’ is an arachnid, of the order Arcarida—a blood sucker! And ‘tic’ is a tellurian medical term for habitual, convulsive twitchings of the face muscles! So it’s quite plain—it’s—er—politicians are bloodsuckers suffering from face spasms!" A picturesque, but incorrect derivation.

(J. W. Skidmore, in Amazing Stories, May 1935)

Photograph of the 1946 sculpture "The Impossible, III", by Maria Martins, from MoMA. The sculpture depicts an abstract nude couple moving towards an embrace, but their heads consist largely of spiky tentacles that aggressively reach out to the other, and are partly connected, and it's kind of disturbing.

Ever feel kind of down and out
You don't know just what to do?
Livin' all of your days in darkness
Let the sun shine through
Ever feel that somehow, somewhere
You lost your way?
And if you don't get-a help quick
You won't make it through the day?

Could you call on Lady Day?
Could you call on John Coltrane?
Now, ‘cause they'll, they'll wash your troubles
Your troubles, your troubles, your troubles away!

Photo of a toy truck in a playground. The truck has "garbage collection" printed on its side.

Picture of a country bedroom, with a countrified bed and a wood-plank floor,looking out onto a snowy landscape, with a copy of the Oxford Canadian Dictionary holding the door open.

My hand, holding a book by a window with snow outside. The book is titled _Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us_.

Video of my feet crunching through fresh dry snow

Album cover of Richard Thompson's _Rumor and Sigh_

Photo of a children's easel, branded "TINY LAND", but with the "A" stylized without a crossbar, resembling a lambda (Λ)

Cartoon of a picture of a book titled "Roget's Book of Words That mean the Same Thing As Other Words, or Almost the Same Thing."

Screenshot of a text reading "I just watched Realm of Satan. And I thought of you."

Picture of my hand holding a copy of Merriam-Webster's 12th Collegiate

My hand holding a copy of John Darnielle's just-published _This Year_

Photograph of a desk area; the desktop is cluttered with objects, including a manual typewriter, and is surrounded by (mostly reference) books, in built-in bookcases in front and on the side. If you know what to look for, you can see both volumes of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang on the bottom shelf on the left, and a second copy of volume 2 on the right-hand wall.

"On they rowed, even when one week into the trip, around 350 miles in, a broken rudder (a blade at the rear of a boat used for steering) left them stranded at sea. Repairs were attempted, but even the spare rudder malfunctioned due to what they would later learn was a manufacturing fault."

Photo of a boule of sourdough bread, in a cast-iron baker with its top removed and set on the side.

Picture of my torso (and a bit of my unshaven face), fearing a "Manhattan votes early" sticker on a blue Shetland sweater under a brown leather jacket, with Manhattan buildings in the background

Charles Barsotti cartoon, featuring a bearded writer writing longhand with a half-smile, and his thought bubble reading "'A writer?', she gasped, her perky breasts heaving. 'God, I _love_ writers!'"

1750–

A woman who is regarded with respect or affection similar to that often accorded to an aunt (sense 1a) despite not being linked by this specific kinship; esp. a close family friend or (chiefly regional, as a term of respect or affection) an elderly woman. Also as a form of address or as a title preceding a first name. Cf. auntie n. 1b, uncle n. 1b.
Frequently as a title. Cf. sense 1a.ii.

Photo of the back of Webster's 12th, showing the back band, with typical promo copy

Photo of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 12th edition, on a glass desk with a small stack of books in the background, &c.

Screenshot of a command-line email reader (Mutt), showing an unread message from Sunspel with the subject "The Sunspel Bespoke T-shirt Service"

Picture of Sam Anderson interviewing Lance Richardson on stage at the New York Public Library